


Tooth and Claw

by branwyn



Category: Cabin Pressure
Genre: Aging, F/M, Injury, h/c
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-11-07
Updated: 2015-11-07
Packaged: 2018-04-30 12:40:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,190
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5164187
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/branwyn/pseuds/branwyn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For this prompt on the meme: http://cabinpres-fic.dreamwidth.org/6968.html?thread=13777976#cmt13777976</p><p>"Carolyn was never so annoyed as the day she realized she had feelings for her grumpy, sarcastic, conniving, insufferable First Officer."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tooth and Claw

The secret to growing older, Carolyn believes, is managing one's expectations. Don't let yourself get let down by other people; disappointment is the enemy of an extended lifespan. 

Her strategy for keeping disappointment at bay is simple. Upon setting forth on any enterprise, she schools herself to expect, if not the worst possible outcome, then at least the outcome that entails the maximum inconvenience for her. It's worked out surprisingly well. MJN still exists, against all odds, and in a state of financial solvency at last. She managed not to completely ruin Martin's life before he moved on to new things. She _succeeded_ in all but ruining Gordon's.

Sometimes she thinks she ought to write a book. But let's face it, there's only so much about her life's philosophy she can explain to people who’ve not given birth to an Arthur.

In the settled order of her existence these days, there is only one thing that does surprise her anymore, and that is Douglas.

She remembers with the utmost clarity what her first impression of Douglas had been. Handsome, though a bit too paunchy to justify that much swagger. Tall, but he knew better than to loom. Charming—and yet, he’d not once attempted to charm her.

He wasn't entirely unlike Gordon when Gordon was twenty years younger, except for one crucial difference. With a single glance of his appraising eye, Douglas had made blazingly obvious his intention of squeezing her and the job she was offering him for all they were worth. Knives in the back were not his style. He’d _wanted_ her forewarned.

Carolyn’s response, of course, had been to hire Martin, who had a stick with the word “probity” carved on it jammed up his arse. But she’d thought rather well of Douglas for being an honest man in his way. They understood each other; or at least they had an understanding, which wasn’t quite the same thing, but it served. 

No one, not even Hercules, treated her quite so much like an equal. Hercules, bless him, came all but equipped with a pedestal to jam under her feet. She liked him for it—after Gordon, it made a lovely change from being trodden upon—but Douglas was the person whose company she sought when she was tired of fuss.

For this reason, it was Douglas and not Hercules she phoned when she was hospitalized the week after her 67th birthday.

*

Carolyn weathered humiliations rather badly. She knew what this said about her, and she didn’t like it, but all mortals possessed a weakness, and hers was to despise vulnerability. 

She’d fallen in her back garden on a November evening, attempting to herd Snoopadoop indoors for her bath. It wasn’t the dog’s fault; she’d lost her footing on an uneven bit of pavement strewn with damp leaves, and down she had gone like a ship in full sail plucked beneath the waves by a monstrous creature of the deep. 

Carolyn had always enjoyed excellent health, and she wasn’t prepared for the pain; not that the physical suffering was itself so very severe, but the mental and emotional shock of being betrayed by her body unsettled her deeply. The breath was stolen from her lungs; tears sprang into her eyes, uninvited and unwelcome. Snoopadoop dashed to her side and tucked herself into the curve of Carolyn’s body, licking her hand and whimpering apologetically, as Carolyn rolled onto her back and wondered if this was how it was all going to end: ignominiously and alone, in the grey rain and damp.

A few minutes passed, and her mind cleared. She took stock of her rattled body. Knee a bit hot, palms scraped up. The worst was the pain in her side, probably a rib or two that had cracked like a clumsily mismanaged teacup. She got to her feet in stages and limped indoors, Snoopadoop trotting behind her.

Arthur was at his girlfriend’s for the weekend, and she was grateful for it, though reason suggested that she might need some assistance in the coming days. She wouldn’t apologize to anyone for that; he was her son, and she had a right to protect him from her own creeping mortality. Hercules was on a solo flight to Dublin with a two day layover; she was grateful for that too.

This wasn’t her first broken rib. Not long before her divorce, there had been an incident with Gordon of which she’s never spoken, though she thinks Hercules might have figured it out from one of two sideways references she’s made since their marriage. Douglas likewise had seemed to make a point of sticking to her side during the St. Petersburg incident, although she thinks he’d merely been making a guess based on his own knowledge of human nature. Anyway, the point was that she knew more or less what to do, and therefore judged there to be little point in troubling herself with a trip to the hospital.

If Martin had been handy, she might have acted differently. Lord knew the man was a frazzled mess most of the time, but if they had one thing in common, it was a complete lack of surprise in the face of disaster. He had grit that way, and he was sufficiently cowed by Carolyn that she might have persuaded him not to tell anyone. But Martin was in Zurich, precisely where she wanted him. She would and could manage on her own.

In the end, it wasn’t the cracked ribs that did her in. It was the incipient pneumonia. After thirty-six hours of shallow breathing, she sought medical advice via Google, which warned her of the risks particular to her age group. If being prodded by a doctor half her age was distasteful, weeks or months spent in recovery would be nothing less than torture. Grudgingly, she packed a bag and phoned a taxi—one of those little personal luxuries she could afford now that her airline was no longer operating at a complete loss. Her doctor was able to see her after only a little wait, and he canceled that courtesy out of Carolyn’s personal ledger by sending her straight on to the hospital.

It could have been worse. Carolyn was still managing by herself, that is to say, without the assistance of anyone who wasn’t receiving a salary for the privilege of assisting her. But by dinner time, she was facing the worst obstacle yet to present itself.

She was bored.

Her book was failing to sustain her interest, and there was nothing on the telly worthy of the name of entertainment. And she’d rated a private room, so there wasn’t even the distraction of loathing her fellow patients to occupy her time.

So she did what she always did when she felt the need to sharpen her claws. She called her favorite scratching post and bid him to attend her, under the guise of demanding that he fetch her something better to eat than the wilted, over boiled, and uniformly grey fare provided her by the hospital.

Douglas popped up half an hour later with a hamper on his arm.


End file.
